Mr Brock said the result continued the strong recovery after the financial constraints resulting from the Christchurch earthquakes and the global financial crisis. The underlying strength of the performance was improved net interest margin and containment of costs. Margin improvement was driven by favourable funding conditions as lower funding costs provided an offset to lower lending margins resulting from strong competition and customer preference for fixed term loans.

Mr Brock said deposits continued to account for more than 80% of all bank funding.

Mr Brock said that at the end of December, Kiwibank had 880,000 customers - basically one in four of all bank account holders in New Zealand. Of this number 418,000 were considered main bank customers (having most or all of their banking with Kiwibank). This represents an 11.6% market share.

Mr Brock said that now the bank has been operating for 13 years, its customer base has not only kept growing but has diversified to be a stable and growing base of mortgage holders, depositors and small to medium businesses. There continued to be strong performances by associated companies involved in KiwiSaver, wealth management and insurance.